In Mammon Among Friends, Malcolm C. Harris, Sr. provides commentary and news about the national economy, the Wichita economy, the world of finance, and postal economics. Experiences such as forecasting postal volumes and revenues, being involved in utility regulation, and teaching corporate finance have shaped his analysis.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Is Capitalism Moral? Is Wall Street Capitalism?

George Gilder has a new edition of his justly famous Wealth & Poverty. (Available in print formandaudio book.) I would argue that the case against capitalism is a failure of imagination. Gilder goes a long way to address that void.He makes the case that seeing capitalism as the blind pursuit of self interest is myopic. Capitalism is moral in a way that socialism is not: the entrepreneur wants to help people and is utterly dependent on others. As Schumpeter stressed, greed is not what motivates entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs are the ones that make an economy dynamic.It has been said that Gilder's book was the economic bible of the Regan revolution. In this new edition, he addresses more recent phenomena such as the financial crisis. Far from being entrepreneurial capitalism, he sees Wall Street as the corrupt collusion of big government and big finance. The financial crisis was the inevitable result of "the usurpation [by] crony capitalism of real capitalism." He exponds his views in this interview that runs close to ten minutes: